In this blog I will walk you through the process of making this unique side table, coffee table. I have only used hardwoods for this project. The legs are made from dark ash ( which was stained with wenge woodstain ). The base for the chevron top is made from white ash, whereas the chevrons themselves are made from American walnut and white ash, that was additionally stained with white woodstain. I have used some basic joinery like half laps and hidden screw connections to give that clean look with no fittings being visible. I hope this will be an interesting project for you and as complex it may seem it actually is fairly simple and straight forward. I hope you will enjoy making your own version as I did mine.
First step is to prepare your lumber. All my boards were rough sawn so I had to mill them first before I was able to get them to rough dimensions.
In this process I have firstly used my jointer to get one flat and straight face and side. After that I have used my table saw to get a the other side parallel to the first. With that out of the way I have moved to my thickness planner. This allowed me to get the second face parallel and flat. I have taken all the board to the correct thickness at this point as well.
With all the lumber ready I was able to proceed with the next step of the build. I have started making the base for the chevron top. I have used white ash that I took to 1,5cm thickness. The boards need to large enough to accommodate a circle with diameter of 44cm.
I have glued all the boards together and applied some parallel Bessey clamps, by far my favourite clamps. Check them out on Amazon here.
While the panel was drying, I have turned my attention to building the legs for the table.
For that I have used dark Ash boards as it was easier to stain them with dark woodstain and get the colour I was after.
First of all, I have cut all the boards to the correct sizes. The legs are actually fairly easy to make as the only angle you need to cut is 10 degrees (in my case, you can go for a steeper angle) on all the boards. To make sure I got the same exact angle on all pieces I have made all the cuts in one go. The bottom support is attached to the horizontal boards with glue and screws. I have countersunk the holes to about 5mm depth. This allowed me to make wooden plugs that I have glued in after the screws were in. That has hidden the screws and gave it a nice clean look. The top support was attached to the vertical boards with screws as they would not be visible when the top is attached.
With the legs put together and stain applied I now could start working on the table top.
For the chevron top I have used walnut and white Ash (to which I have applied two coats of white stain). All the pieces were cut to 45 degrees angle which made an interesting pattern. As the base panel for the table top was now glued up, I have set up the pattern on the side and started to transfer it to the panel. As I did not want to see any holes from brad nails, I have used CA glue and wood glue to attach all the pieces. CA glue helped to quickly stabilise the pieces so the would not move while adding the rest of the pattern.
After that I have added some weight on top for the wood glue to do its job. Just to be on the safe side I have left it to dry to the next day.
Now came the most stressful part of the build. I had to cut a circle from the glued table top. For that I have used my router. It took absolutely for ever but I had to go slow with very shallow passes as the wood grain in this case was running in all possible directions. There was a very high chance of tear out. In the end it came out very good with virtually no tear out at all. But I have to admit it was a very stressful process. After that I have cleaned up the edge and added few coats of wenge wood stain to it. To seal the whole project, I have used a clear gloss varnish, two coats with light sanding in between coats.
the last step that was left to do is to attach the top to the legs. I have to say I'm so happy with this project, how it came out. initially I though the legs would be very hard to make but turns out it wasn't difficult at all. If you would like to see the whole process of making this table then head over to my channel, link and the video are just below.
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